I have been working on a 34 stude for a customer ,it's not a Hamb friendly car,its"pro street" a real waste of a car actually. but, its his car and I have to do what he wants.. I just thought I would show you a few progress pics
damn, it's a good thing your customers don't read the HAMB, huh? anyways...great pics showing how to rebuild the bottom of an old car, nice work!
He knows how I feel about pro street cars..LOL,I got nothing against pro street in the right applications, just not this car tho LOL
to be honest I dont have any good shots of the whole car ,this is as close to the whole car as I got.The first pic is when it first got here.The rest are just random shots
Nice work! Glad to see a rough old body being brought back to life...regardless of it being HAMB friendly or not.
My hats off to you for tackling all that rust....and your doing a hell of a good job with it. My 34 had a hell of a lot less rust to start with then that, but made up for it with the other body work that was done to it. Here is a collage of some of the work done to mine and how it looked in it's original form. I can't tell you who did the work, because it was done before I got it, but it was damn nice work. I did do the fab on the headlight buckets to accept the Mercedes headlights...nothing compared to what your tackling though. Since I'm a Studebaker fanatic, please keep posting updates so I can follow along, and good luck with it
These Studebakers are a unique car for sure....I will post more for you as I get more done...I just have to make it a roller and finish the floor and then it goes back to the owner
Chad I did some net searching and couldn't find one photo of a '34 3w. It must be a very rare body and as far as restoring it to original or pro-street, it all hinges on customer priorities. For a streetrodder, a car with modern amenties is a far better ride then a stocker. But for a die hard Studebaker fanatic, and as rare as this car seems to be, stock would be the only way to bring it back to life. You're doing a heck of a nice job to what would appeared to most as to far gone and a lost cause. Good on you. And speaking of Studebaker, some may not recognize my handle, but I'm bringing a very rough '50 Champ back from near death to what will surely be an eye-popping modern Retro Rod. The build can be viewed at my personal site. www.angelfire.com/super/1950bulletnose My computer generated rendition of the finished car. Car as it appears today.
If it started life as a President 8, then yes it is a rare piece with only 3698 being made (most coupes, but a few convertibles...talk about a rare car, I think there were less then 100 convertibles). A friend of mine had a President 8 coupe that was featured on the cover of Turning Wheels (Studebaker club mag) in August 1984. He ended up selling that and bought the Dctator that I ended up with shown in the previous post in this thread. I don't remember exactly, but there were some differences in the actual size of the president compared to the other cars...I think the fenders were mounted higher (the actual distance between the top of the fender and where it mounted to the frame was about an 1" more then the other fenders), and may have been slightly longer giving the president a "larger" appearance compared to the other models. Speaking of the other models..the Commander 8 had a total production of 10,315...and the Dicators (like mine) had a total production of 45,851. I don't know what the model break down is in each of these groups, because I can't get to my issue of turning wheels that had all the exact model numbers. The above production numbers came from carnut.com
I did a little more digging and found my sales brochure for "Studebaker 1934" (From the SPEEDWAY comes their stamina, from the SKYWAY comes their style). They list in the president 8 line...a President Regal sedan, a De Luxe (the way they spelled it) coupe, a President convertible roadster, and a President Custom sedan. In the Commander line they had a De Luxe Sedan and a De luxe Coupe, a Convertible roadster, and a Custom St. Regis Brougham (2 door sedan). In the Dictator (bottom of the rung cars) they offered the De Luxe St. Regis Brougham (2 door sedan), a De Luxe Coupe, a Custom Sedan (what mine was), and the Convertible roadster In all three lines the coupes are a three window style. They offer either a two p***enger or four p***enger version of the coupe...the four p***enger being with a rumble seat. And Chad...what might be a help or a hinderance (I'm gonna guess a hinderance) all three have different wheel bases. The President has a 123" wheelbase, the Commander has a 119" wheelbase, and the Dictator has 113" wheelbase. Not sure where you need to mount the mustang II cross member because unless you know what model it is. it's a **** shoot. If you can talk to the owner and see if he knows what model it is, or if there is a VIN tag on the body you can probably figure out the model from that. I will help you figure out the model if you need.
It was a rumble seat car forsure...Their is no body tag on it...I will have to try and get ahold of the owner to see which model it is